this morning when I was coming home after taking An2 to school, a man called out: "hello, China woman... hey, China woman..." I realized that he was calling me so I turned and waved. It was drizzling so I kept going and came home.
After staying at the hospital for 18 days after Reese's birth, I met a lot of people. Depending on my interaction with them, they would call me by different names. The ladies that I roomed with for many days call me Pauline. One mom whose baby was also sick at the time called me "osofo mami" (pastor's wife). One afternoon I met two little girls who called me "obruni" (white person). With the hospital staff, sometimes they call me "Mrs. Settles", madam, Mrs. Paulina, Akosua's mom (that's Reese's local name), etc. And for the food sellers, I'm their "customer" (they actually call me that sometimes).
18 days in the hospital allowed me to realize some things about how people label me and address me in cross-cultural context. I'm sure the same is probably true if I were living in America or Taiwan or Asia where there are different labels for me depending on how I dressed and looked to the person... and the point of my blog post: how people address me depends on the degree of intimacy or how much the person knows about me or how we relate to each other. For people who don't really know me and just see me in passing, they just call me by the external appearance. It's just like my short encounter this morning when the man called me "China woman", I felt amused and didn't feel offended or angry because I know 1. English is not this man's native tongue so he wouldn't know that it's offensive; 2. the man doesn't really know me but just sees the exterior and calls me with what he knows in describing or labeling me. It is the same way when people call me "obruni" on the streets. All that the people (or mostly the children) know is that here's a lady who has fair skin and a foreigner. But with time and interaction, even the children in our neighborhood, especially the ones who have visited our house and played with our children, do not call me "obruni" but maybe auntie Pauline or An's mother.
Besides how others label or call me depending on their knowledge of me, I believe interactions or relationships go both ways. If, being a foreigner/missionary only become offended when people merely address me by what they see externally without approaching them and letting them know who I am (besides just a foreigner or white lady), I would not be able to build relationships and more importantly, let God use me in any way that He desires in the lives of some of these people I encounter while I'm living here (or anywhere in the world for that matter).
I'm especially touched by the woman who called me "osofo mami" at the hospital. Our encounter started when she and her friend called me "obruni" and chatted with me. But over the few days, she found out that my husband is a pastor or minister (osofo) and so I'm "osofo mami". She didn't take this knowledge lightly because she also wants her baby son to become a "man of God" (and she called him by that name often). She came to me one time and asked Joshua and me to pray for her baby because he didn't seem to be getting much better. I think about a day or two after we prayed for her, her baby son was discharged from the hospital. All glory to God and thank God for the mutual respect, interactions we had during those few days at the hospital.
